Ever seen a car wreck? The faster the cars hit the more damage. Same with bullets. The faster they hit, the faster they expand.

Faster means the more they spin! RPM's kill

I don't have an opinion either way but I could see that materials have a certain speed of collapse according to their nature and a too-fast bullet could outrun that inherent rate of collapse. IOW, a linear increase in velocity might not result in a linear speed of collapse.

I actually think it is a pretty complicated subject that would require a top materials engineer and a mathematician to do the theory on.

Anyway, those who argue that way have tons of experience to back up their side.

Wow...this is still going on?

As speed increases so does expansion. Non of those bullets magically quite expanding as velocity increased.

^^That's going to depend on bullet construction. There are plenty of construction types that will explode if they hit tissue too fast. kmon1 posted a good video from Hornady of bullets passing through ballistic gel. It was quite informative.

Have used those bullets and they work well and similar to the Trophy Bonded Bearclaws with great weight retention and do keep mushrooming as velocity increases. The Swift A-Frame base section being thinner copper jacket expands supporting the mushroom. Neither of those bullets are quite as quick killing as the Partitions IMO which are not bonded core and the core is a little more brittle than pure lead as the 2 mentioned above. The Partition front core expands and depending on velocity and which partition might even shed all the front core if velocity is high enough resulting in secondary projectiles that do damage outside the main wound canal. The partition is designed to shed in most cases 30 to 40 percent of its weight but that 60 to 70 percent drives deep creating a long wound channel with secondary ones where the part of the core separated from it.

There is an optimum speed for most bullets depending on construction. Some bullets will say do not shoot over 3300 fps. Speed can have a poor effect on some thinner walled bullets at long range especially. A good read is Applied Ballistics for Long Range Shooting. It will go into more than I would right now but it is correct. Watch the guys that win and the speeds they shoot. If accuracy is the number one thing then there is something to be learned from them. Then it is practice practice practice.

If the bullet explodes it was designed to ( such as a varmit bullet) or was pushed too fast. If it exploded that would be maximum expansion. Show me one bullet design other then a solid that expands less as velocity increases. A portion may look like it hasn't expanded after it has lost the front half but it expanded. Even a fmj will fragment if impact velocity is too high.

Very true and with some target bullets and varmint bullets and even some labeled as hunting bullets by one company push them faster than the recommended velocity and you just might see a blue vapor trail that might ot might not reach the target as the bullet disintegrates in flight.

X3

^^Yup^^

That's right. But none of that was mentioned in your last post. Just pics or more expansion due to more velocity, thus the discussion of bullet construction. This also directly applies to ballistic coefficient (even though those are bad words to some people around here). IF, big if, someone wants a stong bullet to perform at distance then it needs to be moving faster at that distance. The way for it to be maintaining velocity down range is with BC.

That is where I see no problem with working the equation backwards. I want a stout bullet to perform at "X" distance. So it needs to be moving at "X" velocity at the muzzle and have a BC of "Y". That is why twice I have built a rifle around a bullet and the chambering to push that bullet the speed I wanted.

I agree with everything you just said. I just found picture that I thought would explain it and put it up without enough explanation. I even agree with the bc stuff.

Gotta' say this has been a very informative thread.

ding ding we have a winner.
my biggest buck was killed with a turdy turdy open sights. that deer didnt know i wasnt using a high bc or sd bullet , he didnt know i didnt spend twice the rifle price for a scope either.

whatever people hunt with practice is the key to everything. Hence why I am shoot a ton of arrows every evening getting ready for next week. No doubt we are splitting hairs on good better and best. I just think we can learn and share ideas to get better.

Shhhh. Don't say that too loud.

EXACTLY

The best bow hunter I have ever met has been practicing every day for over 30 years.

Oh boy, you had to bring that up! That issue is good for its own multi-page topic. I don't think I've ever read a definitive post on why that might not be true.


postoak: any object moving through a medium encounters resistance to it's movement(think bullet thru air or bullet thru flesh). The resistance to the motion of the object increases with the square of the velocity. So a faster bullet actually encounters much more resistance. That's why your car gets better gas mileage at 50mph than at 80mph.

So when the bullet hits flesh at higher speed it encounters much higher resistance, which results in much faster expansion (BTW, the expansion is "helped" by the increased centrifugal force due to the higher rpm of bullets fired at higher velocities)

The expansion begins the instant the bullet encounters flesh. So the hypothesis that a bullet goes thru a deer so fast it doesn't have time to expand is truly incorrect.